Volodymyr Zelensky has been talking about Russia’s battlefield fatalities and asked his new Defense Minister to make it a priority.
In December alone, more than 35,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously injured, says the leader of Ukraine, and the goal should be to increase the number even higher – to 50,000 every month.
“Make the cost of the war for Russia one that it cannot sustain, thus forcing peace through strength” – this was the task that the president did, Mykhailo Fedorov told reporters in his first briefing as Minister of Defense.
The suggestion that Russia is suffering heavy losses is not new. A new report last week estimated that 1.2 million Russians have been killed, wounded or missing since the all-out invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago – the highest casualty figure suffered by a major military power since World War II. The report put the number of Ukrainian casualties between 500,000 and 600,000.
“The data suggest that Russia is barely winning,” the report’s authors wrote.
Perhaps not, but as senior officials from Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare for the next round of face-to-face talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, it would be a mistake for Ukraine’s supporters to get excited.
“Highlighting the large numbers of Russian fatalities is an indicator that Ukraine’s main strategy is attrition. But we need more than that if we are going to move the dynamics of the war in a better direction,” a former Ukrainian official told CNN.
On the one hand, focusing on headline-grabbing numbers offers an important perspective on Ukraine’s refusal to cede Donetsk as part of any “peace” deal with Russia.
The logic behind Kyiv’s position is simple: Few Ukrainians believe that Putin has any goal other than the total subjugation of their country. So, why cede territory for nothing if Ukraine can expect to kill hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers while Moscow keeps trying to take Donetsk by force?
Ukrainian soldiers still hold about 20% of the eastern region, which includes heavily fortified cities such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and the latest estimates from the Institute for the Study of War suggest it could be another 18 months before Russia captures it all.
If those Russian soldiers are not killed fighting – the logic continues – they will remain in occupied Ukrainian territory ready to start the war again, from a more advantageous position, as soon as the Kremlin has devised an excuse to do so.
Very few in Ukraine believe that Putin will drop his territorial claims, and most have lost confidence that US President Donald Trump will apply the necessary pressure to make him change his mind.
“Despite the fact that the government is negotiating in good faith, many think that the whole process is done to ensure the support of the American government,” said the former Ukrainian official.
“People are very skeptical about the negotiation process.”
But if there is no confidence that the negotiations are directed anywhere, what about Ukraine’s battlefield strategy? Is piling up the other side’s body bags the best way forward?
Former American fighter, Ryan O’Leary, who led an international volunteer unit called Chosen Company, believes not, and sparked a heated debate after putting forward his arguments in a post on social media.
He disputed the much-remembered “e-points” scheme, whereby Ukrainian units earn points for every Russian soldier killed or piece of material destroyed. Points are exchanged for new equipment, and the Ministry of Defense says the scheme provides a wealth of data to help shape future plans.
But O’Leary suggested they create the wrong incentives, leading Ukrainian commanders to prioritize simpler drone strikes against infantry targets across the battle line, rather than tougher but more significant deep strikes against Russian logistics — such as vehicles and communications centers, as well as Russian drone crews operating from rear positions.
“The drone war is not about who hits more soldiers today … The operational depth is where wars are decided. If the enemy can move fuel, ammo, drones, crews and repair vehicles 10 to 40 km behind the line without fear, they themselves depth even if they lose 5x the men in the trenches,” O’Leary wrote on X.
In truth, his indictment exposes Ukraine’s two main structural challenges.
Firstly, in drone technology, operational tactics and countermeasures, Russia has caught up and is possibly ahead.
Writing on Facebook, Oleksandr Karpyuk, an aerial reconnaissance officer in the 59th Separate Assault Brigade, complained that Ukraine failed to capitalize on its early advantage in this space, in particular by not diversifying the number of radio frequencies used by its drones to transmit signals.
Consequently, once Russia improved its electronic warfare (EW) technologies, it needed to jam only two frequencies to put a significant dent in Ukraine’s ability to fly drones behind Russian lines.
In addition, writes Karpyuk, Russia’s air defense tactical crews are greatly improved, and Moscow continues to benefit from taking the lead in the development of fiber-optic drones, which are impervious to Ukraine’s own EW countermeasures, because they do not transmit signals.
And then there is the issue of Ukraine’s workers.
The lack of infantry is well known. Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute estimates that there are fewer than ten Ukrainian infantrymen per kilometer of the front. He also estimates that most brigades have no more than 10% of their total personnel in infantry. Traditionally, that number would be above 30%.
Lee told KI Insights, a strategic intelligence unit run by the Kyiv Independent, that even those low numbers were enough to prevent a major advance by Russian forces, who only managed to make small, incremental advances.
But in a war where drones – not infantry – matter most, it is Ukraine’s deficiencies in drone crews that are most pressing, especially in the key battle for operational depth – the destruction of targets up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) behind the combat line.
In direct defense of the fighters under his command, the head of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Forces of Ukraine, Robert Brovdi, said last week that there needs to be a threefold increase in the number of drone operators. Only 30% of the front line – which stretches 745 miles – is currently covered, he wrote on his Facebook page.
Fedorov, the new defense minister, acknowledges the scale of the problem, telling the Ukrainian parliament that about 2 million people are ignoring their call-up documents, while another 200,000 have deserted.
Many now count on his ability to address the labor issue and regain Ukraine’s technical edge, while ensuring that he is hitting Zelensky’s goals.
“Unless we are constantly ahead of the Russians in technology and battle tactics, I cannot say that the chance of winning is high,” warned the former Ukrainian official.
CNN Victoria Butenko and Daria Tarasova-Markina in Kyiv Contributor to this report.